Linked List: March 16, 2011

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Thorsten Overgaard’s Leica M9 Pages ★

12-page “review” of the Leica M9, written over a long stretch of time of actual field use. Effectively, an ongoing journal as camera review. Splendid photos, too.

Netflix to Enter Original Programming ★

Nellie Andreeva, for Deadline Hollywood:

In what is probably the biggest gamble in its 14-year history, I hear Netflix has outbid several major cable networks, including HBO and AMC, for Media Rights Capital’s drama series House of Cards, executive produced and directed by David Fincher and exec produced by and starring Kevin Spacey.

Genius move, if they can pull it off.

And, if they do, when does Apple start doing the same thing? Imagine a hit show that’s only available through iTunes.

Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi Edition Due on March 27 for $599 ★

That’s a much more competitive starting price.

Here’s Why Developers Are Scaring Twitter ★

Another great story at GigaOm — this one by Ryan Kim — regarding Twitter’s threats to client developers:

The saga over Twitter’s new hardline stance against developers just got more interesting. While Twitter officials downplay the company’s crusade against new third-party Twitter clients, with claims 90 percent of active Twitter members use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis, fresh analysis suggests third-party Twitter apps account for much more traffic: 42 percent, according Sysomos, a social media analytics company.

This makes sense. Casual users are more likely to use Twitter’s official clients and the twitter.com website, but active users are more likely to use third-party clients.

Why Twitter Should Think Twice About Bulldozing the Ecosystem ★

Mathew Ingram:

Without the help of third-party apps like Tweetie and Tweetdeck, the company likely would not have been nearly as successful at building the network (and a ready-made client like Tweetie certainly wouldn’t have been sitting there waiting to be acquired). But the ecosystem didn’t just build demand for the network — it also helped build and distribute the behavior that now makes Twitter so valuable: the @ mentions, the direct messages, re-Tweets and so on, none of which were Twitter’s idea originally. That created a huge amount of goodwill, and led to the (apparently mistaken) idea of an ecosystem.

Great piece, and I share Ingram’s sentiments. It’s not that I think Twitter is wrong in any moral sense to do whatever they want with their own API — it’s that I think they’d be foolish to do anything that dampens the diverse ecosystem of client software that has evolved around Twitter. They’re acting against their own self-interest, but apparently don’t realize it.

Wi-Fi-Only iPads Get GPS When Tethered to iPhone ★

As Zachery Bir says, yet another reason to consider a Wi-Fi-only iPad. See also: Kyle Carmitchel at Tablet Monsters.

Hotspot Tethering Allows FaceTime Calls Over 3G ★

Jordan Yee:

I’m just putting two and two together here, so hear me out: if an iPhone 4 can only make FaceTime calls over Wi-Fi like the iPad 2, could an iPad 2 make a FaceTime call over 3G by connecting to an iPhone 4’s Personal Hotspot feature which is Wi-Fi?

Yes, this works fine. In fact, while carrying around both my own AT&T iPhone 4 and the Verizon iPhone 4 review unit I got from Apple, I was able to use FaceTime from my iPhone over the Verizon iPhone’s hotspot — and it worked well.

Running Up the Score ★

Mark Sigal on the iPad 2:

For while it may be tempting to see the battle between iOS-powered iPads and Android-powered tablets as likely to be close, the truth is that Apple is blowing out the competition. The competition has no offense, no defense, and in the words of Steve Jobs, is getting “flummoxed.”

And they should be. Why? Because comparisons to Android’s strong competitive effort in the smartphone realm hide the fact that in the media player realm — arguably the closer analog to the iPad’s domain — Android is a total non-entity. This speaks to the simple fact that when you remove the artificial “pull” of mobile carriers from the media/tablet realm, Android devices are hosed.

Maybe “artificial” is an unfair adjective. Android was, I believe, designed with the phone market in mind — and thus designed with the pull of the carriers in mind. But count me in with Sigal on the big picture: the iPad is more like the iPod than the iPhone, and that’s bad news for Android.